Reciprocity (Social and Cultural Anthropology)

Interests in exchange: increment, equivalence and the limits of big-manship

by Rena Lederman

An experiment in tolerance: How religious stereotypes shape attitudes of reciprocity and political engagement

by Mia Kamal

Co-authored with Jason Turcotte, Donyelle Davis, and Christy Arrazattee.
Presented at the Southern Political Science Association Annual Meeting
New Orleans, January 12, 2012.

Scholars have identified a pronounced decline in civic and political engagement in America over the last half-century,... more Scholars have identified a pronounced decline in civic and political engagement in America over the last half-century, with a number of factors contributing to eroding political interest. This experiment examines the relationship between religious tolerance and political engagement. More specifically, we examine the relationship between religious tolerance and attitudes toward reciprocity and political engagement (e.g. the willingness to support a candidate for public office). While the results – measuring willingness to campaign for candidates who evoke religious stereotypes – did not reveal statistically significant findings, the study does, however, offer a foundation for future research in the area.

Power to the people: exploring neighbourhood formations in social recommender system

by Steven Bourke

Plant-food and tool transfer among savanna chimpanzees at Fongoli, Senegal

by Stacy Lindshield

Co-authored with Dr. Jill Pruetz, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Iowa State University

Transferring food is considered a defining characteristic of humans, as such behavior is relatively uncommon in other... more Transferring food is considered a defining characteristic of humans, as such behavior is relatively uncommon in other animal species save for kin-based transfer. Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) are one exception, as they commonly transfer meat among nonrelatives but rarely transfer other resources. New observations at Fongoli, Senegal, show habitual transfer of wild-plant foods and other non-meat resources among community members beyond transfers from mother to offspring. We explore various explanations for these behaviors with a focus on age- and sex-class patterns in transfer events. In a total of 27 of 41 cases, male chimpanzees at Fongoli transferred wild-plant foods or tools to females. Most other cases involved transfer among males or males taking food from females. In light of male–female transfer patterns at Fongoli, we examine four hypotheses that have been applied to food transfer in apes: (1) testing for male-coercive tendency (van Noordwijk and van Schaik, Behav Ecol Sociobiol 63:883–890, 2009), (2) costly signaling (Hockings et al. PLoS ONE 2:e886, 2007), (3) food-for-sex (Gomes and Boesch, PLoS ONE 4:5116, 2009), and (4) sharing-under-pressure (Gilby, Anim Behav 71:953–963, 2006). We also consider hypotheses posed to explain transfer among callitrichids, where such behavior is more common (Ruiz-Miranda et al. Am J Primatol 48:305–320, 1999). Finally, we examine variables such as patch and food size and food transport. We discuss our findings relative to general patterns of non-meat transfer in Pan and examine them in the context of chimpanzee sociality in particular. We then contrast chimpanzee species and subspecies in terms of non-meat food and tool transfer and address the possibility that a savanna environment contributes to the unusual pattern observed at Fongoli.

Critique des conditions de la durabilité: application aux indices de développement durable

by Bruno Kestemont

Nous espérons ne plus jamais devoir démontrer que la théorie néoclassique est intrinsèquement incapable de s’occuper... more Nous espérons ne plus jamais devoir démontrer que la théorie néoclassique est intrinsèquement incapable de s’occuper du développement durable , voire qu’en tant qu’utopie, elle mène au contraire du développement durable.

Les instruments dits «économiques» deviennent dès lors suspects. Ils sont seulement utiles dans le cadre d’une société de marché elle-même non durable. Ils permettent de s’illusionner sur les possibilités de maintenir un niveau de vie basé sur le gaspillage des ressources, et le pillage systématique des laissés pour compte ou de leur environnement.

La théorie néoclassique résiste tellement peu aux évidences, aux raisonnements et à l’éthique que l’on peut se demander si sa popularité dans le monde «moderne » ne résulte pas d’une forme d’aliénation des esprits, encouragé sans doute par le mirage de la société de consommation, ses publicités et ses médias, voire, par la propagande cynique de ceux à qui elle profite le plus.

Sur le plan théorique, comme le néoclassicisme est démoli de l’intérieur comme de l’extérieur, des «théories économiques alternatives» voient timidement le jour. Certaines d’entre elles (Sen) oublient le caractère social de l’être humain, d’autres (Chine ) oublient son caractère égoïste.

Nous nous sommes inscrits dans un mouvement de critique de la science elle-même, de son ethnocentrisme dès lors qu’il s’agit de définir un projet, le «développement durable », pour l’ensemble de l’humanité. Refuser d’entendre Maudo, ce petit paysan fier de ses valeurs au fin fonds de la brousse bissau-guinéenne, ne serait-ce pas oublier une part importante du savoir?

Poussés par de simples chasseurs-cueilleurs «pauvres et déconnectés», des anthropologues, malgré leur étiquette de conservateurs «culturalistes», pointent le bout du nez pour proposer une théorie de la réciprocité , et voilà que des psychologues y trouvent un fondement essentiel des comportements de l’homo economicus en personne.

A partir d’une théorie des externalités, nous avons pu suggérer que la prise en compte d’un horizon lointain, autrement dit la prise en compte du «plus que soi», de l’autre au sens large, avait un coût très important: le coût que les hommes sont prêts à payer pour vivre en société. Le coût de la réciprocité . Le coût que nous payons chaque jour et qui a mené notre espèce à passer les mailles de l’évolution , et qui nous donne, ensemble, une satisfaction certaine.

Une fois modélisées, les externalités ne prennent-elles pas, comme la réciprocité , la forme des relations tant recherchées dans les théories du développement durable , mais sur lesquelles peu de gens ont réussi jusqu’à présent à travailler? On lit en effet souvent «qu’il manque le lien» entre les différentes dimensions du développement durable, mais en pratique, tout le monde continue à travailler sur chaque dimension séparément, comme dans le cadre de la recherche d’indicateurs. Or, ce lien ne serait-il pas l’essence principale du développement durable, tout comme la relation est l’essence principale (avec l’ego), du comportement humain?


Les indicateurs sont aux modèles de développement durable ce que la parole est à la réciprocité : c’est là que réside en partie le lien. C’est notamment autour des indicateurs que les hommes (et les ordinateurs) se rassemblent également pour penser, décider, échanger, s’harmoniser, définir un chemin commun pour l’humanité, avec le support de réseaux de plus en plus étendus, mondialisés ou presque (il y manque encore nos paysans pauvres et déconnectés). Chaque groupe de travail a ainsi, dans son coin, défini qui des jeux d’indicateurs, qui des indices synthétiques plus ou moins pondérés.


Il est possible de concevoir un modèle qui mette en évidence les relations entre entités a priori fort différentes. L’exemple vient d’une part des «comptables nationaux» eux-mêmes, d’autre part des écologues. Ces tentatives ne couvrent pas encore toutes les dimensions, mais l’approche qu’ils proposent est potentiellement généralisable.

A ce point du travail, il reste de nombreuses voies à creuser.

L’analyse multicritère (Faucheux, Vincke) pourrait s’appliquer aux comptes satellites développés dans la comptabilité nationale et apporter un support sous forme de «lien politique » entre dimensions «inconciliables». Des indices implicites résultats de sorte «d’arbres de décision » (Faucheux et Noël) pourraient peut-être prendre la place de pondérations figées utilisées actuellement? Ce sont des facteurs limitants qui donneraient alors le verdict de durabilité pour chaque pays (par exemple, dépasser une norme environnementale entraîne la non durabilité). On peut imaginer des indicateurs se concentrant non plus sur les relations, mais sur les «victimes» (quels sont les «sacrifiés» de chaque système), la limitation des dégâts étant une contrainte de durabilité, le développement étant ensuite libre sous ces contraintes (c’est implicitement le modèle de libéralisme bridé utilisé dans la gestion des affaires publiques en Belgique ou en Chine , sauf que les normes seraient beaucoup plus axées sur la durabilité globale). La diminution de «l’empreinte sociale» serait alors une priorité non seulement politique mais également une voie «rationnelle»: un développement basé sur l’exploitation (de l’homme ou de l’environnement) ne peut pas être «durable». On peut aussi se demander quels éléments de cultures sont porteuses ou non de durabilité. Enfin, au delà des indicateurs «statiques» eux-mêmes, il faudrait retomber sur les étapes à accomplir pour tendre vers le développement durable : que faire en pratique? quel est le chemin du développement durable suivant l’état initial de chaque pays?

Les fondements utilitaristes et anti-utilitaristes de la coopération en biologie

by Bruno Kestemont

Alors que les sciences naturelles ont semblé donner raison à l'utilitarisme pendant plus d'un demi-siècle, il devient... more Alors que les sciences naturelles ont semblé donner raison à l'utilitarisme pendant plus d'un demi-siècle, il devient aujourd'hui possible de contredire cette hypothèse: l'homme n'est pas uniquement égoïste, en plus du fait qu'il n'est pas parfaitement rationnel. Ce non-utilitarisme de l'être humain s'applique aux formes les plus primitives de la vie: la coopération est inscrite dès les origines et pourrait être, avec la survie du plus apte, un des moteurs essentiels de l'évolution. La découverte récente de mécanismes permettant la naissance de la coopération dans un contexte de gènes égoïstes remet 100 ans de débats sociologiques sur la table de travail.

Reziprozität-Ein sozialintegrativer Mechanismus der Gesellschaft?: Darstellung des Wandels historischer Ordnungsvorstellungen am Beispiel des Bettlers

by Jens Hofmann

Capturing the conversational space at home: Participants as friends and collaborators

by Nicola Dawn Smith

Abstract
Capturing and documenting data from the field can be a major challenge when the research subjects are... more Abstract
Capturing and documenting data from the field can be a major challenge when the research subjects are friends or family, or where an interview results in a couple airing personal disagreements.  With a heightened sensitivity to the gestures, intonations, home environment and biographies of people we know, we need to consider how to document or reference what is known and relevant but not actually said.  These informal interviews question our perspective on familiar relationships built on trust and challenge how we convey what we understand from subtle body movements, idiosyncratic figures of speech, habits and rituals as well as fragmented reflections on past events.  This paper will explore some of the issues arising from capturing the ‘conversational space’ when the participants are known to the interviewer, frequently to each other and selected as an interconnected web of contributors to a study.

Key words: Ethnographic with autoethnographic practices, conversational interviews, participant listening, reciprocity, home renovation.

Deserving Altruism 1,16_reference updated

by Hong (Hannah) Lin

Co-authored with David Ong

Recent and accumulating evidence shows that though people are not completely selfish, they are not as altruistic as... more Recent and accumulating evidence shows that though people are not completely selfish, they are not as altruistic as might have been suggested by prior experimental results. These papers showed that people decreased their giving if allowed the opportunity to “silently exit,” or if the experiment was double-blind. Evidence for positive reciprocity, where subjects give more than dictators with the same endowment, has always been rare. Lin and Ong 2011 however found significant positive reciprocity in a trust game which the 2nd player knew that the 1st player was unaware of the possibility of reciprocation. Though their setup was double-blind and 2nd players could silently exit, none did. We investigated the possibility that the 1st players could better signal their “altruism type” in their setup as suggested by the theory of type preferences of Gul and Pesendorfer (2011). To test this, we introduced a 3rd player into Lin and Ong’s setup, again unknown to the 1st player, who could give part of a now exogenously fixed endowment to the 1st player after observing the 1st player giving to the 2nd player. We found that 3rd players’ giving to 1st players’ was significantly correlated with 1st players’ giving to the 2nd players, and not significantly correlated with endowment. Furthermore, our exogenous endowment allowed us to show that this result was not consistent with 1st players exerting social influence on 3rd players. Unlike prior studies, we showed that the explicitness of double blindness with silent exiting made a difference only for the lowest level of endowment. Our result supports prior results which showed that player characteristics, like their facial features, can be predictors of behavior. However, to our knowledge, our study is the first to identify the apparent altruism type of the recipient as the driver of giving to them.

The Ethnography of (extreme) Poverty: Theoretical and Empirical Implications of the Homeless Study // Etnografie (extrémní) chudoby: Teoretické a empirické implikace výzkumu bezdomovců

by Ondrej Hejnal

Hejnal, O. 2011. Etnografie (extrémní) chudoby: Teoretické a empirické implikace výzkumu bezdomovců. Plzeň.

This article aims to propose new possibilities of the anthropological study of homeless people. The secondary... more This article aims to propose new possibilities of the anthropological study of homeless people. The secondary objective is to investigate both the empirical and theoretical levels of these possibilities. Drawing from my own fieldwork of ’street people‘ , I suggest four possible ways to look at future research topics: (a) urban adaptation (the traditional and problematic one); (b) urban geography of reciprocity; (c) ’squat‘ becoming a place and (d) linguistic anthropology analysis. Finally, I will discuss the relationship of theory, empirical material and the validity of ethnographic research.

Sedlenieks, K 2009 ‘Aplokšņu komunikācija: dažu pateicību antropoloģiska interpretācija’ Zinātniskie raksti. 2009. g. sociālo zinātņu nozares pētniecisko darbu publikācijas. Rīga: Rīgas stradiņa universitāte. lpp 64.-72.

by Klavs Sedlenieks

Title in English: Envelope communication: anthropological interpretation of some 'gratitudes'

Article compares two high-profile alleged bribery cases - that of surgeon Aris Auders (a former minister of health)... more Article compares two high-profile alleged bribery cases - that of surgeon Aris Auders (a former minister of health) and that of surgeon Valdis Zalters (a then president of Latvia) who both had taken unaccounted-for money from their patients who were treated in by them in the state-owned medical facilities. By use of gift-exchange theory I demonstrate why Auders was sentenced to prison while Zalters was considered eligible for presidency. I also show how Zatlers managed to communicate his 'envelopes' in a way that they seemed to be mere gifts while Auders failed to do that and was charged with criminal offense.

Review of Luigino Bruni: Reciprocity, Altruism and the Civil Society: In Praise of Heterogeneity (2008)

by Alejandro Rosas

2010. Economics and Philosophy 26, 108-114

The Return of Reciprocity. A Psychological approach to the evolution of cooperation

by Alejandro Rosas

Biology and Philosophy 23 (4): 555-566

Looking at language contact through reciprocity ̠edited

by Atanu Saha

This is a talk given at the center for Linguistics at Radboud University of Nijmegen on 15/11/11

In my talk, I address the contact situation of a particular area of
the Indian sub-continent through the lenses... more In my talk, I address the contact situation of a particular area of
the Indian sub-continent through the lenses of the reciprocal
construction. The so-called “North East” of India is the area with the
largest linguistic and biological diversity of the sub-continent.
Three major language families are represented in the area: Indo-Aryan,
Tibeto-Burman and Austro-Asiatic. I look at the expression of
reciprocity in specific languages at the level of morphology and
syntax and the historical relations between them. Where these
languages are genetically unrelated, we still expect common patterns
due to constant contact. For example, the Tibeto-Burman languages
Nyishi and Meitei employ both nominal and verbal morphology in
reciprocal constructions, whereas the Indo-Aryan languages Assamese,
Bangla and Hindi do not. I will show that the former languages are
losing their verbal morphology and use nominal reciprocity more
productively due to contact with Indo-Aryan which dominates the region
for various socio-political reasons. These are just some of the
highly interesting aspects of language contact in the Indian
North-East.

Social Welfare as Small-Scale Help: Evolutionary Psychology and the Deservingness Heuristic

by Michael Bang Petersen

Forthcoming in American Journal of Political Science, 2011.

Public opinion concerning social welfare is largely driven by perceptions of recipient deservingness. Extant research... more Public opinion concerning social welfare is largely driven by perceptions of recipient deservingness. Extant research has argued that this heuristic is learned from a variety of cultural, institutional, and ideological sources. The present article provides evidence supporting a different view: that the deservingness heuristic is rooted in psychological categories that evolved over the course of human evolution to regulate small-scale exchanges of help. To test predictions made on the basis of this view, a method designed to measure social categorization is embedded in nationally representative surveys conducted in different countries. Across the national- and individual-level differences that extant research has used to explain the heuristic, people categorize welfare recipients on the basis of whether they are lazy or unlucky. This mode of categorization furthermore induces people to think about large-scale welfare politics as its presumed ancestral equivalent: small-scale help-giving. The general implications for research on heuristics are discussed.

Who Deserves Help? Evolutionary Psychology, Social Emotions, and Public Opinion about Welfare

by Michael Bang Petersen

Co-authored with Daniel Sznycer, Leda Cosmides and John Tooby. Forthcoming in Political Psychology, 2012.

Evidence suggests that our foraging ancestors engaged in the small-scale equivalent of social insurance as an... more Evidence suggests that our foraging ancestors engaged in the small-scale equivalent of social insurance as an essential tool of survival, and evolved a sophisticated psychology of social exchange (involving the social emotions of compassion and anger) to regulate mutual assistance.  Here, we hypothesize that political support for modern welfare policies are shaped by these evolved mental programs. In particular, the compassionate motivation to share with needy nonfamily could not have evolved without defences against opportunists inclined to take without contributing.  Cognitively, such parasitic strategies can be identified by the intentional avoidance of productive effort.  When detected, this pattern should trigger anger and downregulate support for assistance.  We tested predictions derived from these hypotheses in four studies in two cultures, showing that subjects’ perceptions of recipients’ effort to find work drive welfare opinions; that such perceptions (and not related perceptions) regulate compassion and anger (and not related emotions); that the effects of perceptions of recipients’ effort on opinions about welfare are mediated by anger and compassion, independently of political ideology; and that these emotions not only influence the content of welfare opinions but also how easily they are formed.

Reciprocity's dark side: Negative reciprocity, morality and social reproduction

by Paz Moreno-Feliu

Co-authored with Susana Narotzky.
Published by Anthropological Theory, vol. 2 No. 3, September 2002

This article proposes the concept of negative reciprocity as a necessary and substantive aspect of general concept of... more This article proposes the concept of negative reciprocity as a necessary and substantive aspect of general concept of reciprocity. We contend that the concept of reciprocity is useful only when conceived simultaneously in its negative and positive forms as they are articulated in historical processes. If treated in all its complexity the concept of reciprocity might help us to understand the ambivalence often present in social relationships. Reference to a moral domain is the central tenet that differentiates reciprocity from exchange, Reciprocity is based on a shared morality in its positive form and on the break, transformation or suspension of the moral order in its negative form. We base our discussion on the ethnographic account of the social relations that supported circulation or resources in the Auschwitz concentration camp. However, a comparative perspective indicates that the negative reciprocity pervading Auschwitz's social relations is an extreme example of a broader category of human interaction in no way unique.

Visualizing reciprocal and non-reciprocal relationships in an online community

by Kadhambari Sankaranarayanan

Trust, Information Acquisition and Financial Decisions: A Field Experiment

by Alexander Elbittar

Forthcomming in Economía Mexicana, (2012) Vol. XXI: Iss. 2, México.

We study the relationship between information acquisition and trust in financial decision making. A field experiment... more We study the relationship between information acquisition and trust in financial decision making. A field experiment with a variation of the trust game was conducted with the partners of a financial cooperative located in a Mexican rural area. Individuals who frequently visit friends are more trustful, those who visit their families regularly reciprocate less, and active cooperative partners reciprocate more. Individuals show interest in acquiring information on the financial status and participation in social networks of other people with whom they may establish financial transactions. However, information does not appear to affect transfers; trust seems to overshadow information acquisition in financial decision making.

Social Capital: An Evolutionary Concept Analysis

by Laura Flamini